


The Maker Keeps His Fools

by Serindrana



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-26 23:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/pseuds/Serindrana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles, in no particular order (most of the time), inspired by and written for <a href="http://crasscenturion.tumblr.com">CrassCenturion</a> as well as a few others. Bethany/Loghain primary pairing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Good Fereldan Soil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CrassCenturion](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=CrassCenturion).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally prompted by Seimasin, "Good Memories".

“Have you ever been to Lothering?” Bethany asks, unable to stare another minute at the bowl where she’s trying to mix up an effective poultice. She’s never been a cook, or an herbalist, but somebody needs to be.

“Of course I have.” Loghain is half across the room, maps spread out on the table. He really should be doing this with the Commander, she thinks, but it is hard to get him away from his maps and his plans and this thoughts. She can do it only through words that are not requests or orders, winding her way into his thoughts until he can’t ignore her.

“Before this, that’s where I spent the longest part of my life,” she says, setting down her pestle and looking over to him. “It was where we actually settled down. It wasn’t perfect, I couldn’t go to town often and there were templars everywhere, but it was lovely.”

“Bandits and bears,” he mutters.

“Well, yes. But that’s true just about everywhere.” She pushes away from the table and goes to him, touching lightly at his lower back. When he doesn’t pull away, she slides her arm around him and nestles up to his side, looking down at the painted hide stretched out over the table. “And it was lovely in the summer and the fall. Miserable in spring, though, with all of the rain - you would think it was the Wilds.”

He grunts in response, not forming words.

“I do miss it,” she says, softly, and he pulls away abruptly.

“Say what you mean, girl,” he snaps as he begins gathering up his maps and papers. “That I destroyed the place you called home, that my actions forced you and your family into exile. I know well enough what I did, you don’t need to- to-” He sputters, then falls silent, anger and what she has come to recognize as his peculiar form of guilt, the _I did nothing wrong but I regret some of what resulted_ guilt, creasing his brow.

“I didn’t mean that,” she says, simply shaking her head. “I never said any of that.”

It’s true, though, that she remembers the way he pulled her brothers to Ostagar and nearly killed them. It’s true that she remembers the march of his armies, the way their boots churned up the grassy plains and turned them to mud before they reached the Imperial Highway. It’s true that she remembers - all too well - the darkspawn surge from the south, Carver’s death and-

But she wants to remember pleasant things, good things, and it’s also true that she blames him for none of it, not in any way that stops her from going to him and taking his hand in hers. He flinches, but doesn’t pull away.

He’ll listen. She knows that look.

“It was a wonderful place,” she says, quietly, “and I would not have chosen to leave it - but it remains a wonderful place when I think of it.”

He says nothing.

“And I hear they’re rebuilding.”

“I will,” he says, frowning as he looks for the words that can so often elude him, “talk to the Commander. Perhaps… perhaps they will have some need of our assistance in the south.”

She can’t help her smile. “Perhaps indeed. I’ll get my best _oh, please, please, you don’t know how much it would mean to me_ face ready, shall I?”

He snorts. “As if you ever put it away.”


	2. Finery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally prompted by Seimasin, "At a party."

_Orlais_.

He will never understand why Weisshaupt assigns him to any place in Orlais. They are not kind about it, either; they do not send him to the Fields of Ghislain where he could think more about military history and less about  _shared_  history. No, they sent him first to Montsimmard, where the town still remembers the movements of chevaliers and of supplies into Ferelden during the war, where the people know his name and tell stories of him.

And now they send him to Val Royeaux.

On a mission of  _diplomacy_.

They are all fools.

“Or,” Bethany says from behind a folded screen, imported from Llomerynn by their host, “they are pushing you to move on.”

“That does not make them less foolish,” he snaps, and tries not to watch the shadow of her as she laces herself into Orlesian finery. This is not how he wants to see her, all painted up and tied into a frilly package. Warden blues suit her better.  _Dirt_  suits her better.

But then he amends; she will be lovely, unbearably so, and it will all be because of Orlais.

He sighs.

“Are you at least dressed?” Bethany asks, and his frown intensifies. He’s gotten himself into the leather trousers that cling too tightly, the ridiculous boots, even the frilly shirt and too-elaborate doublet. So, in a sense, he is _dressed -_ except for the mask his host has told him he must wear. At least, he thinks, it isn’t a mabari’s face.

It’s a grey and blue griffon, befitting his office if not his identity.

“That’s a no, isn’t it,” she continues, and it’s her soft laugh that makes him sigh and lift the mask to his face, tying it in place.

“No,” he says, “I’m dressed. Maker take them all, I’m dressed.”

“Good,” she says, and with a rustle of fabric and his sharp intake of breath, she steps from behind the screen.

“Because so am I.”


	3. Weisshaupt's Agents, pt. 1 [T]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to Finery.
> 
> Guest-starring some Nathaniel/Cauthrien. Written for CrassCenturion.
> 
> T.

They’re supposed to be meeting agents from Weisshaupt at this damnable party, but all he can focus on are the following two things: the inane nattering in Orlesian all around him, no attempt at using the Trade tongue that they do everywhere outside of Val Royeaux; and Bethany.

And  _Maker_ , Bethany.

He had thought Warden blues suited her, and it seems the Orlesians have agreed, in their own exaggerated way. She’s in blue and silver from head to toe, with a more than generous gap around her shoulders and chest, all pale skin and scars and jewels hanging from her throat. The skirt concedes Fereldan style, tight around the hips but for the layers of fabric draped there, with nothing to support the long skirt so that it falls straight to the floor. Her sleeves split at the elbow to reveal undersleeves and a beaded lining.

She’s painted like some Fade creature, all swirling lines of color on the rounded curve of her shoulders, her cheeks, lace-like designs on her forehead where the mask does not cover and on the swell of her bosom, faint and enticing. He’s seen nothing like her. He doesn’t want to see anything  _but_  her.

“Weisshaupt,” she reminds him when his gaze strays again to the valley between her breasts, and he could swear that the fabric has shifted lower, that she is nearly bared to him - but the braided rattan in the channels of her gown that keep her waist confined make that impossible. “ _Loghain,”_ she says, and he mutters a curse.

He is an old man; where has his self control gone?

He looks away from her to scan the garden they are passing through, their host leading the way. Elegant topiaries, jeweled fountains - yes, this is every display of opulence that he hates. (Her dress, too, he reminds himself - but that leads to thoughts of freeing her from it, and he can’t afford those.) And there, strolling arm in arm from another gate in the estate walls- yes, a silver griffon emblazoned on the tabard of the man.

And the woman- he frowns. It is only a ghost, a passing fancy of an addled mind, that makes him think he recognizes the broad set of shoulders, the height, the strength, the carriage.

“There they are,” Bethany says, and with a murmured thank you to their host, and an excuse, she takes Loghain’s elbow and leads him towards their match.

The man, with his tabbard and his clear Warden affiliation, has much the same mask as him. His costume is not made to look as armor, however, and instead sets off legs clad in tight leather, and a jacket below his tabbard that is blue dark enough to be black, fitted and capped with black leather gloves.

And the woman-

“Loghain?” she asks, and he stops breathing for half a heartbeat. He knows that voice. He crafted that voice. He led that voice to leading an army.

“Cauthrien,” he says, and his gruffness covers his surprise and confusion well enough.

Her mask is a dragon’s face, no doubt the influence of whoever her patron is here, but her chin and forehead are painted in kaddis -  _Courser_  kaddis, he notes, and he can’t help his smirk. The chevaliers present won’t recognize the meaning, but he does.  _Chasing down cavalry._

She still carries herself as a warrior, and he finds himself wishing he could see her face. Instead, he watches as the man beside her bows. The light shifts over his face, and Loghain makes out a familiar nose moments before he speaks.

“Warden Loghain, it is an honor to meet you again.”

 _Nathaniel Howe._

 _Nathaniel_ ** _bloody_** _Howe_ , back from the Free Marches and in Warden colors and with  _Cauthrien_  on his arm like some bauble-

But she’s not some bauble. She is not dressed like Bethany (not that Bethany is a bauble, Bethany is  _Bethany)_ ; her high-collared doublet is perfectly fitted (if bedecked in beaded scales), her leggings the same, her boots shined to gleaming. Her hair is loose, but other than that, the mask, the paint - she is the woman he once knew.

And she is with Nathaniel Howe - _a warden._ Weisshaupt had told him to expect two representatives.

But he can’t believe it.

“Loghain?” Bethany asks at his side. “I believe there are introductions to be made.”

Orlais will be the death of him.


	4. Weisshaupt's Agents, pt. 2 [T]

There is something surreal about meeting Loghain again for the first time in years in Val Royeaux, at a party, trussed up like a Feast Day pheasant. It was always a possibility, she concedes silently; he is a warden, she is a warden, and wardens travel, they move, and their associates shift with the seasons.

But here, in Orlais, and he has… somebody on his arm.

“This is Bethany Hawke,” he says, and the name means nothing to her. It’s the _dress_. The low cut of it, the tight fit of it, and Cauthrien isn’t sure what to make of any of it because this isn’t something she expected of Loghain, to have a painted delicacy of a woman on his arm, and-

 _Hawke_. The name finally registers, even as Nathaniel is giving his name and bowing. That’s not an Orlesian name.  _Hawke_.

“I served with your- brothers?” Cauthrien says in place of her name or any other usual greeting. “At Ostagar.” Good men both, and the younger had shown promise. The memories dredge up the old shame, but she’s gotten good at tamping it down. Nathaniel’s hand on the small of her back helps; he knows, after all, where her mind goes when it wanders.

Bethany stares at her, and Cauthrien can’t make out her expression behind her paint and her mask, but then she nods. “Yes,” she says. “My brothers. Garrett and Carver.”

Her accent is Fereldan, and while that helps, Cauthrien’s shoulders easing just a little bit more, it leaves her more and more confused into  _why she’s there_. “Good men,” she repeats from her thoughts. This time she catches the pull of Bethany’s lips. She expects the next words from the younger woman to be _and you left them to die_ , until she remembers exactly who stands next to her; if he can be forgiven by this girl (and she is a girl, so  _young_ , and flush, and- young-) then she must be by force.

What Bethany says instead is, “Yes.”

Nathaniel clears his throat. “Shall we, then?” he asks, motioning to the door. “Weisshaupt will be disappointed to know that all of its discretionary funds are being put into costumes we aren’t using.”

Loghain snorts, and Cauthrien can’t help but roll her eyes as well. Bethany laughs and shrugs.

“You’re probably right,” she says.

And Cauthrien finally realizes, truly realizes, that Bethany Hawke- is a  _warden_.

—

It explains why Bethany moves more like a country girl than a painted and perfumed Orlesian whore, even if that’s what she looks like. Cauthrien finds herself keeping a strained distance. It would be the greatest comfort she’s known in years to walk at Loghain’s right hand again, but his left has Bethany attached to it, and Loghain is sending Nathaniel looks that Cauthrien knows mean,

 _Rendon Howe’s son, and why are you here_?

And the whole thing is one great mess.

 _It’s Orlais,_  she reminds herself, and while Nathaniel looks for the officials they need to bow and scrape to, she goes in search of wine.

She finds it when Bethany Hawke appears at her elbow and offers her a glass.

“I thought we should talk,” Bethany says, and Cauthrien has to fight to keep from scowling. She remembers Bethany’s brothers, and that she’s taken the Joining, that she fights darkspawn like the rest of them. Cauthrien takes the glass.

“About?”

“About- Loghain. I’ve heard rumors, you know, about you two. Carver once-” Cauthrien is a breath from interrupting, but Bethany stops first, lips pursing and gaze growing distant.

 _Carver once_.

Cauthrien doesn’t know how much of her family this girl gave up, or even if Carver made it out of Ostagar alive. She does know that she caught him passing around a rather well-drawn pamphlet of  _lives of the commanders_ , and that she’d had him barely able to walk from the work she put him through in consequence. This isn’t a conversation she wants to have, but she waits for it all the same.

“Well,” Bethany says at last, “I just… wanted to make sure things were okay. Since we’ll be working with each other.”

“Okay?” She can’t be more than twenty-five, Cauthrien decides. She’s younger than Nathaniel, certainly, possibly even younger than the Warden, and she’s so-  _round_. She’s soft. There are hard edges to how she holds herself, and the dress can’t help with her presentation, but Bethany Hawke is smaller, rounder, with hands that she can’t imagine are calloused.

But maybe they are. Loghain, with a woman with uncalloused hands- Celia had fit that description. And Bethany  _is a warden_.

A warden who just said something. Cauthrien clears her throat. “Sorry, what was-“

“Well,” Bethany says, scuffing the heel of her slipper against the patterned marble floor. “I just- were you? Are you? He’s never mentioned you like that, but you know how he is-“

“No,” Cauthrien says, lips pressed to a thin, tight line. “We aren’t, and we weren’t.”

“Oh, good. I didn’t want to get in the way. You two do have so many stories about you-“

“I know. Very few of them are true.” That doesn’t mean that she feels good about this situation, but it does mean that she has one less reason to object. But the others- “You’re rather… young.”

Bethany frowns, painted lips curled into a seemingly perfect pout. “Is that a problem?”

“It seems unlike him. That’s it.” Cauthrien takes a healthy swallow of wine, otherwise known as  _half the glass_.

“Taking a lover at all seems unlike him,” Bethany counters. “But if he does- if he  _has_ , which he has - then I doubt he cares much for age, except to tease me about it constantly. What he cares for is competence.”

And Bethany’s right. Void take her, but the girl at least understands him. Cauthrien finishes the rest of her glass and crosses her arms over her chest, looking for Nathaniel and fighting at the jealousy inside of her. It had taken her a long time to come to terms with the idea that Loghain would never feel for her the longing and  _need_  she felt for him, and to understand that it wasn’t because of age or even station.

“It’s not just competence,” Cauthrien concedes, softly. “It’s the right person at the right time.”

Perhaps Bethany does have callouses. Perhaps tonight is just a night for costumes and frivolity. Perhaps this is all just a mess of intersecting lives that Cauthrien can’t begin to understand. Perhaps Ostagar caused all of this, too.

Whatever it is, Nathaniel is beckoning. There is actual work to be done here, and when Cauthrien moves for him, Bethany is already leading the way, head held high and shoulders straight in that way that only comes from shouldering too many burdens and fighting through it all.

Those shoulders are marked by scars, and those, at least, give Cauthrien a strange sense of comfort.

He deserves a woman who has fought for something.


	5. What Remains [M]

He woke up before dawn on his fifty-fourth nameday.

No, that wasn't exactly right. He didn't _wake up_. He simply got out of bed. The night had been uneasy and uncomfortable, and if it wasn't his thoughts that drove him from his bed, it was certainly his back. Maybe if Bethany had shared his bed with him, he wouldn't have noticed so much.

Maybe it would have been worse.

She was out on patrol, though, and wouldn't be back until midday at the earliest. Her side of his bed was empty. Her bed, too, would be empty and cold. And perhaps it was the day, or the dismal weather outside, but his thoughts lingering on cold, empty beds, and on what it had been like to lose Celia.

He didn't think about it much. He hadn't thought about it much even then. He was used to an empty bed, always being in Denerim or on the road and so rarely at home in Gwaren. But he still remembered how strange it had been, how much it had made everything go still. How it had been, every morning, whether in Gwaren or not, and realize, _I won't see her again_. It wasn't so much the death, though the death had been horrible. 

It was the knowledge that there was nothing more. Nothing _left_. Just a cold spot in a bed where there hadn't been a cold spot before.

 

___

 

He heard when they returned. He was in the library of the keep, shut away from the outside world, poring over old maps that he knew like the backs of his hands (wrinkled hands, calloused hands, scarred hands), and he couldn't hear the approaching hoof beats. But he did hear the stirring in the keep, the break of laughter in the hall 

He waited for the door to creak open and Bethany to come in, likely without shoes, likely smiling. She always smiled for him. He didn't think she smiled half so much when he wasn't near, but she smiled for him.

The door didn't open, and he felt something like dread settle into his stomach.

It had been a routine patrol, barely skirting the outside of Kal'Hirol, and they were back well on time. No occasion for a delve, and with all the laughter- he shoved the dread aside. It was pointless, fruitless.

And yet it still drew him from the library, looking for her. She wasn't in her room, wasn't in the mess, and wasn't on the battlements where she walked from time to time. It was foolish, haunting the halls looking for her, but he couldn't make himself return to the library, to his room, or to the yard.

He finally began to ask if anybody had seen her, and not ten minutes later he found her in the kitchens. She was still in her uniform, and somehow still in her boots, and she hunched over the hearth and prodded at something in a cast iron pan.

 _A cold bed_. That was all he had to offer her, and the thought came back with surprising and unsettling ferocity. That one day, far sooner than she perhaps realized, he would be gone. There would be no more. It might be a stray blade, or the Calling, or even his age.  And then she would be left, heartbroken and with only what to blame?

Loghain had blamed his absence for Celia's death.

Who would Bethany blame for his?

He knew the answer. _Herself_. She would find a way. The thought made his mouth taste of ashes, and he shook his head. No, this had to end before it reached that point. She could blame him. But he would not expose her to the shock of an _end_.

"Bethany-" he said, and his voice was unsteady and gruff and far too cracked for him to feel comfortable with. He would say this fast. He would say this fast, and leave, and-

She looked up, and the light caught her face and stole all words from him.

But he was not a man to be unmanned by beauty, not even hers, not even the way she grinned, the way her eyes lit up and she took a step towards him. He took another breath, and opened his mouth.

She spoke first. "Happy nameday, Loghain."

 _Happy nameday_. Two words. Two words, and such a basic sentiment, and yet it burned. How many more would he have with her? Would he even see his next? Hers? "Bethany," he said again, "we need to- talk."

"... Talk?" Her smooth brow furrowed. "Is this about proper gift-giving etiquette to a cranky old Warden? Don't tell me you're against the whole thing."

"I am. That's not the point." She knew just the way to get into his mind, to tug at threads of thought he didn't even know he had, that he wasn't ready to share. "Bethany..."

"You're going to say something bad," Bethany said with a slow shake of her head. "I know that tone. That's the tone mother used when she knew father wasn't going to make it-"

He grimaced. Yes, that was exactly the tone. But there was hardly any other. He calmed his breathing and held he gaze. He was an old man, a disgraced war hero, and he had been through more than half the people in this bloody keep. He could face one twenty-two year old women.

"Yes, I am. But it's for the best." He squared his shoulders. "I believe we should end this. Now. Before either of us..."

 _Get hurt_.

"You think that?" Her voice was small.

"Yes. This can't end well. I don't want to do this- to you. Leave you with an empty bed one day, when there's nothing to do but wonder if you failed." He took a deep breath. "I'd rather you hate me now than have that day come."

He could see the hurt in her eyes already, the falling of her expression, the parting of her lips. Her head shook slowly from side to side, small movements with the weight of the world behind them. He stood his ground.

And then something else lit in her face. Something familiar. _Defiance_. Strength, that odd sort of hers, that spine of steel beneath a body and mind so soft and seemingly gentle.

He expected _no_. But she only stepped close, holding her hands out before her, palms up.

"... Mages," she said, and the smooth note of her voice enraptured him, pinned him to the spot, "know a lot about hands. They're our emblem, you know. We often carry staffs or wands, but when it comes to it, we learn with only our hands. We can cast with only our hands. We do our work with our hands, even if it is not the work of lifting or of cutting or of building. We kill with our hands, heal with our hands, and love with our hands."

She took his hand in hers, and pulled it to her lips, pressing kisses on his palm. And then she guided it lower, over the swell of her breast, down the belly he knew wasn't quite flat, was a little round, was a little soft, because although she could march for days, she was still mage. Lower still, to between her legs, and he inhaled sharply at the heat he could feel even through her leggings, her tabbard.

"This hand," she said softly, "is the one I want to hold me, for however long it is able to."

"And its scars? It's callouses?" he asked, voice gone hoarse and barely audible. He stared down at her, how she cradled him for a moment against her, all honesty and no need. 

"Those things give it character." Bethany's voice had grown low as well. She stepped closer, brows raising as she offered him a little smile. "They're how I know its yours."

There were things they had built together, that they had built in each other. His breathing was ragged as he bent his forehead against hers, fingers dropping away to slide over her thigh, her hip. "I am old, Bethany," he whispered, eyes closing.

"And we have already had this conversation, _Loghain_ ," she said in turn, soft hand cupping his jaw. "And you know my answer. I don't care."

"You will." He swallowed, teeth clenching. "When I die, it will all be over. There will be nothing left."

"There will be memories."

His hand on her hip tightened. "Memories aren't the same."

"No," she said, "they're not. But I would prefer to have them of Carver than to not, and they sustain me. I'll live, Loghain. Don't try to protect me from this. Don't make me suffer to protect me."

Loghain closed his eyes.

"I am not Ferelden, Loghain," she said, a wry note in her voice, and he couldn't help the snort of laughter that escaped him.

"Don't test me, girl," he muttered, and her hands carded into his hair, thumbs stroking at his temples as she settled her body against him. She nuzzled against his jaw, and his body ached for hers. " _Distracting_ girl who won't let a man make an argument."

"Oh, hush," she said. "You've made your argument, and I've made mine. You want to protect me, I don't want to be protected. And the last I heard, I'm not a _girl_ anymore."

"Skinned knees and pigtails," Loghain said, and she laughed.

"Haven't worn pigtails in years, and these days it's more twisted ankles and gaping wounds, don't you think?" She let her head drop and nestled close against him, cheek on his shoulder, and he felt her slow, sighed exhale. "I don't want you to go."

He could think up a hundred more arguments - more of the same, some a little different, different approaches to the same tactical nightmare. He should have stayed firm, weathered the storm of her breath on his neck and his hands against her body, her heat warming his palms through. Her on her tiptoes leaning her weight against his. But the point of it all seemed to fade away, and one of his arms rose up around her shoulders, holding her close to his chest.

"Then I won't," he murmured, and the relief that settled into him with the words, the certainty that she understood - she had lost a brother, of _course_ she understood, and she was not a fool, no matter how many times he might call her foolish - soothing his desperate fears. For a moment, he didn't even care that they were in the open kitchen, and he ducked his head to catch her lips, hand slipping over the swell of her hips. He traced a pattern around her thigh, between them towards her center, following the path she had laid out for him.

She laughed, and when he let her breathe again, she toed at his shin. "There's a time and a place," she murmured.

"Damn you and your games," he returned, with a nip to her lower lip, his thumb catching at the laces of her leggings. She skirted back, and he caught her gaze with a look of warning. "You can't just take my hand, and-"

"A time and a place. The time is now. The place is negotiable. Though-" She looked to the hearth and he followed, seeing for the first time what was in the pan. "Your nameday treat should be almost ready."

"That," he said, shaking his head as he looked at the rather deflated, sad looking... thing in the pan, "is something I'm supposed to eat?"

"I-" Bethany frowned. " _Oh_ \- stop that-"

"It looks-" _inedible. Pathetic. A little terrifying_. And the humor of it was more refreshing than the endless cycles of doubt and determination. His brows lifted and he inclined his head to her.

Bethany huffed. "I made it for _you_."

"You made me a lump of dough and custard with a few bits of fruit jabbed into it. Thank you, Bethany, it's just what I've always wished for." His lips curled somehow into an easy smirk and he watched as she flushed at his dry tone.

"Ooh-"

He caught her wrist before her fisting fingers could bring a chill to the air, and tugged her close, kissing her again. Ice still danced up his hand, but he ignored it, and it faded soon enough. "What I mean to say," he said as he pulled back just enough to see her, "is that I'm quite fine with what you've given me already. ... And that I wouldn't want to eat that. You hardly have to worry about leaving it here to come back to my room with me."

"... Oh. I see," she said, and for a moment, he half-expected her to simply tell him no, she wouldn't go with him, she would stay with her- monstrosity. But then a little predatory smile slid over her features, and he motioned for the door.

"On to nameday celebrations, then? And throwing out my back?" _And convincing me again and again that you're sure about all of this?_

"I can fix the latter, at least," she said with a wink. "And the former doesn't need to be fixed at all."


End file.
